Interesting to read everyone's recollections! I can add that when I was
young, my Dad had British cars from the early 1950s, things like the Hillman
Minx and the Standard Vanguard, and I recall that in winter he'd sometimes
stuff a wad of newspapers down between the grille and the radiator, to speed
the warmup on a cold morning. His workplace was only about a couple of miles
away from home, and on a freezing frosty or foggy morning before the sun was
high the car would never warm up otherwise.
I also recall that in my earlier years, say the 1950s and 60s and maybe into
the 70s, it was common in NZ to see cars stopped at the roadside with
bonnets up and drivers standing by, waiting with a handful of rags and a
bottle of water , to top up the boiled-over radiator when things had cooled
down a bit. In NZ we had a great many old British cars in those days and I
suppose most of them had pretty tiny radiators (made for freezing English
weather, perhaps?) that couldn't really cope with an NZ summer, especially
on a long hill or in a slow traffic jam. (Also, those cars were mostly
low-powered engines and with only three-speed gearboxes a long hill could
mean a long slow crawl up in second gear - lots of overheating potential.)
And of course no cars of that variety had electric cooling fans either.
Such cars wouldn't have had sealed pressurised cooling systems either, as
Les Singh mentioned, nor antifreeze in the water, so their boiling point was
much lower than in today's cars too. The first car I had with such a system
was a Morris 1100 of the early 60s, and such a system was quite advanced for
a British car of those years. (The old 1100 also had disc brakes in front -
that was pretty special too!).
We don't know how lucky we are now!
Best regards,
Graham H, NZ (Alfasud, GTV, 156)
http://www.avast.com
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